Blair's revealing gaffe

And don't forget: a vote for Howard the Impaler is a vote for Lord Rothermere!

I have a friend, a Gemini, who's a nice enough bloke but tends to be a bit glib. Several years ago my house was broken into and a lot of stuff was stolen - some of quite sentimental value. My friend offered this philosophical thought "Never mind, better that someone else has it than to lose it in a fire." "Yes." I said, but that's not what I thought. A few months later, my friend's house was burgled and, amoung other things, they stole his beloved record collection... he was inconsolable. I did consider pointing out that at least someone else was having the pleasure of listening to his records... but I remembered how helpful that had been to me and bought him a few pints instead. Now I know how easy it is to put yourself in someone else's situation and, like a play in your mind, live out their misfortunes as though it had happened to you - imagining yourself being upset but realistic, distraught but strong... until it happens to you! [%sig%]

If I knew the burglars, I'd buy THEM a pint.

Can't see the Tory's turning it, nor Labour voters pissed off at Blair letting the Tories get in by voting Lib Dem in the marginals. There's no opposition to Labour and Howard for all his annoying, clipped bluster just looks like what he is - a nasty-minded right wing elitist fool. He would have taken this country into a war willy nilly if you heard him last Thursday on 'Question Time' never mind WMDs. And as for the economy, education and the NHS - would you let them get their hands on those again? I bloody hope not. The Torys are totally lost anyway. And The Lib-Dems? As much as I would love to see them surplant the Tories and become the Oppostion, marginalising the Tory party and giving the country a decent choice in an election (why must we always have one choice dominated by self-serving rightwing elitists who a lot of people will never ever vote for anyway?), I can't see it happening.

Exactly Kj. This election will be decided on local issues that effect every day people in this country. Economy, Schools, health, illegals, unemployment etc, will 'I believe' prevail in the decision making for most people at the end of the day. As KJ rightly says, look at the alternatives.

*shades eyes against the sun searching the horizon for alternatives*

Precisely. I think it a crap paper to.

That's one thing we can nearly all agree on - there are no credible alternatives. The best we can hope for is Labour with a much reduced majority.

If you can't trust a politician.. Who can you trust! How's that for a contradiction. As sayed, a very naive move on the tories part. Most people don't like to be treated like idiots.

mmm... labour have done *such* a great job with access to dentistry for joe public havent they?

The NHS's problems run a lot deeper than just dentists, Liana, sorry to say...

That's probably because the truth hurts.

Yes, but at least you can get a doctor!

*secretly wonders if that's why Brits have such bad teeth*

Cant make an appointment for a dr though. Not unless i ring at 8 in the morning and sit on the phone for an hour... no apointment allowed. Ive been trying to get in to see a nurse (we can only see nurses unless we are certified terminal at my surgery) for three weeks, and no can do so far. Archer, yes probably, but try being on the crappy teeth end of the situation, it's not, in fact, terribly funny. Call me a touch sensitive if you like. I had a very very nasty bone disease in my jaw 9 years ago, and had a fantastic oral surgeon (yeah yeah). Since Blair, I cant even get a dentist. I'm supposed to have extenssive checks to ensure this disease doesnt return, but in fact have not seen a dentist for nigh on five years, when the last NHS one left my surgery. We are currently awaiting the appointment of a polish dentist and a spanish dentist. Thats great, but where are the british dentists? Ah yeah, they cant afford the fucking Uni fees to train for it. They'll just import ones from countries where training is free. Whoo. Yep, labour is so fair, I almost feel like coverting.

i say that if tony blair died in his sleep, all our problems will be resolved instantly. we could all sleep easier in our beds knowing that he was dead. wouldn't it be great? then nobody else would ever make decisions that would enrage us ever again. it would be just one long era of harmony and prosperity, with all the diverse groups of society united in a single vision of our world. *sniff* i think i'm gonna cry.

Sorry, Liana. No insult intended! It's certainly not funny when you need one and can't get one.

Bingo, you are a sanctimonious twat. Archer, I know. No probs.

The problem is that all the doctors and dentists are fucking tories! As soon as they finish their working class education they all disappear into private practice where they can charge a fortune and feel superior.

In the States they have a scheme for student nurses, doctors, etc. to help them pay for university: in exchange for floating part of the cost of the education (which run into the tens of thousands, minimum), the student then agrees to work for a set period of time (usually two to four years, I believe) in an underserved part of the country, like Alaska or the Deep South or on Indian reservations. I think it's a good scheme. Reminds the student of the inequalities of the world, before they step off into private practice. Maybe they should have something like that here...

That IS the NHS.

Yeah. Good point, Smiley. Nurses here have the worst of it, I think. Shite pay for a shite job that the hospitals need desperately, but no-one wants to be one anymore.

Same with Home Care. No one wants to be a care assistant in this area, so they have no chose but to bring in people to fill the positions. Luckily, home care is in the process of being transfered over to health.

I work in health scrutiny at the county council; one of the things the county is worried about is the huge increase in ageing Baby Boomers (like Missi and Smiley!! lol) and the burden the numbers will place on an already creaking national health system. With recruitment rates for healthcare so far down, it's gonna be a real cluster-fuck to get out of. Excuse the French.

Well there you go then: Vote for the biggest idiot and you may actually hit upon an honest politican who admits he knows bugger-all! Told ya them Yanks ain't dumb.....JW's so stupid he'd have to be an honest idiot...just don't give him guns! Hmmmm......SLUGDE FOR PM

Dam. I have a feeling we are not so far apart ag. Any ware near Camb's or Peterborough?

Oh, and Bingo: If I wanted social acceptance, I'd either get married or have have a frontal lobotomy perfomed to save myself time and frustration! Tuff choice....what's yours..*wink*

Yes, to both. Waterbeach, actually. Hello, neighbour!

Hi ag. And your dead right about health. *Smiles*

I wondered if you weren't near when, on one thread, I said, "it's pouring rain here", and you said, "it's raining here, too". East Anglia was getting the most rain, that day. Ha! How funny!

Yes I know. I may even know people who work in a similar filed as you Ag. In 'East Anglia'

It wouldn't surprise me, John. Britain is, after all, a small country. I met a Welsh girl in Bangkok; we hung out for awhile. She left for Hong Kong. We lost touch. Three years later, I was walking with another friend in Brixton, and who did I see crossing the road? The Welsh girl. I may have even met some of your friends in the field. In 'East Anglia'. ;-)

Coincidences fascinate me... I was having a few (cough) glasses of wine with Fergal last weekend, and we were talking about Beth Orton. "I saw her at 2000 in Chelmsford" I said. "Oooh, me too" said Ferg." What a coincidence!" "It was a weird time" I said. "When she was on, I set my head on fire" "No way" Ferg said. "My friend saw that!" Hrm. So did thousands of others I imagine... I saw it myelf on VH1 a few months later. Nightmare.

Humm. Fate Ag. Tis a funny thing. These Welsh girls do get around, don't they. A small world indeed. An even smaller country, as you say.

I guess I should have said 'England, Scotland, and Wales are small countries'; Britain isn't technically a country...sorry.

Waterbeach eh? I know Waterbeach, I used to pass through on my way from here to Doddington, near Wisbech, where my friends lived for a number of years. They now live in York so I goup the A1 instead. I still know the way though MM, in case you make anymore of those baby boomer remarks. Actually I'm NOT a baby boomer anyway, I was born during the war, not the as a result of the biggest shag-fest the world ever experienced in the years following it's end.

I'd rather not ask Tony Blair anything just now, he looks scary. I'd rather not ask any of them anything - they all look scary. I might just vote for my dog Ben - he'd be a great pm. 'The Gentle Ben Party'

Nice philosophy, Funky. But I reckon Ben would soon get pissed off with the lack of world class puppy-chow and start biting The Postman, The Milkman, and The Paper Delivery boy. Felix and his cat-claw-clan will then chuck hissy fits over missing fur and dolphin juice being substituted for Tuna-roe in their fav Catnap, while the three blind mice start a major mouse revolution over their lack attention because no-one's looking at them any more. Now the mice will eventually enslave the entire cat-claw-clan, by masterfully training fleas in cross-contamination and behavioural modification of saliva techniques (basically, the fleas simply mesmerise and control the cats by spitting in their eyes very-very often). And Ben - who's still Top Dog because the canine-clan is flea spit proof in their Rayban's-, conspires with the angry mouse army to force the cat-claw-clan to build dodgy dog-poles out of dead-dog-poo in the shape of pretzels in the middle of the desert. Ben wants these Pretzel-Poo-Poles so the canine-clan can go for walkies every now then to do the sacred Two Dogs f**king dance, while maintaining dignity in having something in hind-leg sight to pee on when finished. Yet while all of this is going on, a doggy Jesus - who's dying to forgive Ben and canine mates of all their sins - is suddenly conceived and born with mange in tact from some dry old virgin-goat's womb (And we can?t explain how this occurred either, as a Jewish flea Pope committed fleaicide on a split dog hair before capture and further investigation was possible). Alrighty then........Now Ben gets caught out big time, by coughing up a fur-ball garnished with blue-vein right in front of Mooky, who's the king-flea in control of all the cat-claw-clans lice! Mooky gets pretty bitchy at this horrid sight of Ben barfing up the plot, so she threatens Ben with the coming of Doggy-Jesus (Of course King Mooky's a she-flea, you fools, now just shut up and listen). Ben totally loses the plot and goes off on a feral rampage chucking snakes, frogs, and shit kicking grasshoppers at his fellow mutts, who are all Red-Setters and jump into the Nile to avoid Ben's torture. Getting further pissed off from all the water in the kennel taps having turned red, due to those lousy mongrels never bathing, Ben orders the head bitch-chef to cook up all the first born puppies as kitty litter to appease the Big Pussy in the sky. After this Puppy-Pie for the Pussy in the sky idea fails miserably (mainly because all good Chefs know doggy-biscuits aren't made from f**cking hushed-up-puppies), fearing he's somehow beyond redemption in Doggy Heaven, Ben then blames the three blind mice for manipulating the canine-clan to have the cat-claw-clan build these useless propagate-pee-and-poo-pretzel- poles in the middle of the desert. But the mice become so outraged with this betrayal of Ben's hurl, that they dropped the bree-basket totally and have Doggy-Jesus's Raybans forcibly removed by an elite squad of rabid Rabbi-flea spitters, whom eventually drown him to death in an upturned doggie Chefs cap... which was foolishly left laying around earlier by Ben's pie making bitch chasing helpless little puppies to hush em up quickly. Nasty little buggers, that flea squad : probably due to the constant stress of only being able to think in the figure-eight patterns of those well-salted dog-poo-pretzels, with no beer to wash away the constant memories of the two dog dancing in the bright moonlight beneath them, I reckon...eerrggghh! The mice, after realising what they've done, revolt by going around scaring lactating mummy Elephants - who fear rabid mice and quickly roll over onto their backs to play fountain with their massive udders spurting upwards into the atmosphere : hence the entire planet becomes drowned in a colostrum flood of epic proportions. Errrrr.....The milk goes sour, then strangely turns to goat cheese for all the moon-walkers and dream catcher to wallow within in future generations! And the moral of this tale is, as it's all Elephant Poo and Mouse Pellets, don't swallow the cheese or some rabid Rabbi-flea will come along and spit in your pet goats face!

So what're you saying, Jaspie?

And sorry, Missi. Don't know what they call folk in your generation: war babies, perhaps? Anyhoo, you'd still be part of the statistics for healthcare burdens...hope you eat your veggies! ;-)

Its a cry for help. What the hell are you on Jasper?

Why don't you all just ignore the twat, he'll give up eventually.

John:Gutless Critter! Sludge:SOOKIE-LA-LA...no if's and all butt! Archergirlie: Hmmmm....undecided as yet. But would like to see her butt anyway... especially if it's into nasty Liana's old goat..lol Yawn....zzzzzzzzzzz

More bollocks for the 'we have no real policies or chances of winning so we'll smear the opposition as much as we can' campaign. I never heard so much crap in my life. This piece sadly enthused over by the press. The relatives of the dead are so many whinging wankers. Their sons and daughters took the Kings shilling for fuck's sake. What did they expect? A 4yr holiday in the pacific? One tosser even went so far as to insist that the names of all of them should be known to Blair. For those that can't see past their hatred of Blair and next Thursdays doomed conservative campaign, Blair has other things to attend to as well as international affairs. eg. the economy, education, health, pensions, blah blah blah I'll make a prediction here. Within a week of the election Iraq will be so far on the oposition's backburner it will fall off the stove.

George, half of me wants to let you run the country. The other half has run out of clean underwear. j

Not sure whether that's the front half or the back half, Jude. I guess I was a bit over the top about the whinging bit, and I don't mean to trivialise their loss, but people who sign up for military service MUST know that the job involves getting shot at and possibbly killed. Their relatives have to accept that the decision to go to war is taken by those in charge. It's no use moaning when things go against you. The Iraqi war was just another one in a never-ending succession of wars that started when the first two humans fell out thousands of years ago. It ISN'T going to change. We're humans. We fight each other to the death. The bit about all this constant war crap that pisses me off is that it is a continuation of the same crap in the press perpetuated to sway the election. If it was the price of sanitary towels or the length of toilet rolls they would STILL be using the argument to get their way at the polls. The only 'gaffe' is on the part of those that have to resort to this sillyness about whether Blair recalls an exact number. I really don't believe that most people in this country are dumb enough to fall for it. Actually I think maybe they are!

Some people foolishly love their off-spring, George, and it probably upsets them to know that the only people who really care about their pain are those who opposed the war in the first place. To have to listen to callous bastards who sit safely at home with their families and mindlessly claim that they wouldn't complain if their kids were shot or blown up probably gives them something else to whinge about though.

No comment, VO5?

Most people love their offspring you wan.ker. And most people accept that when their offspring make decisions about their career that those involved know what the job is about. If my son CHOSE to join the army and the government sent him to fight somewhere, I'd be upset if he was injured or killed. BUT I certainly wouldn't be blaming the government for it, it would have been HIS choice. Anything else you want to educate the site about?

So now you're telling us they CHOSE to die, George?